1. Field of the Invention
The field of invention relates generally to the fitting of golf equipment and the manufacturing of golf equipment and more particularly to systems and methods designed to improve a golfer's swing and manufacture golf equipment customized to individual golfer's swing.
2. Related Art
A wide variety of methods have been used to form clubs have been used. Specifically, golf club heads have been forged or cast and then ground or machined, and then polished to achieve desired dimensions and appearances. However, these processes have a number of short comings.
Further, golf club heads have generally been manufactured with average dimensions based on an average user without any regard to the specific needs and swing dynamics of specific golfers. This was due to the expense and/or time required made customizing a head mold to incorporate design changes extremely impractical. Thus, to reduce cost and/or save time, a common mold has been used for the head design regardless of the swing dynamics of users. However, not all golfers are identical and many golfers may benefit from optimization of club design parameters such as lie angle, loft angle, or other design parameters. Through post-manufacturing processing, such as grinding or bending with a vice, may allow some custom fitting of clubs, these processes may have limited effectiveness and can create additional problems such as metal fatigue or weakening of the club.
Additionally, existing manufacturing techniques may also require additional post processing, such as grinding, due to manufacturing tolerances. Further, existing techniques have limitations in the shapes and dimensions that can be produced.
Therefore, there is a need for golf club heads that can be more customized based on a specific user's swing dynamics, as well as manufacturing methods that can produce a wider variety of shapes with tighter manufacturing tolerances.